There and Back: Revolutions - (the circular pattern emerges and the light shines)

From Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (Regarding the Russian Revolution):

".....If you charged someone with the task of creating a new world, of starting a new era, he would ask you first to clear the ground. He would wait for the old centuries to finish before undertaking to build the new ones, he'd want to begin a new paragraph, a new page.

"But here, they don't bother with anything like that. This new thing, this marvel of history, this revelation, is exploded right into the very thick of daily life without the slightest consideration for its course. It doesn't start at the beginning, it starts in the middle, without any schedule, on the first weekday that comes along, while the traffic in the street is at its height....."

Friday, June 5, 2009

Revolutions - (the circular pattern emerges and the light shines)

If it weren't for three major revolutions I wouldn't be sitting here writing this. I would exist in a different mind, a different continent perhaps, wouldn't be named what I am, would have no knowledge of these events. My parents would not have met. My children would be someone else's. There would be another human being taking my place on this planet.

The American Revolution begat the French Revolution. Germans in France move to Ukraine. Life is good, the new American West right there in Ukraine. World War I comes along, Germany sends Lenin back to the Soviet Union on a sealed train to make trouble for the czar. Germany and Russia sign a treaty. Lenin and the Bolsheviks overthrow the czar - third revolution. Lenin/Stalin collectivize the farms in Ukraine, life in Ukraine takes a turn. WWII happens along because WWI never really settled things. This is now the big one. Some Ukrainian Germans make it back to the west. The others are scattered over Siberia and Central Asia. Western Germany is in ruins after the big one. Although they speak the language, Germany is not their homeland.

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Acknowledgements

My father was born in 1919 in Rohrbach, Ukraine and lived through the collectivizations, famines and World War II. Upon his release from an American POW camp, he found his family in a refugee camp in Germany. After stints in the coal mines of England and Belgium, he returned to Germany to start a family. Still afraid of deportation back to the Soviet Union, he decided to take his family and immigrate to America. Two brothers, one of which died in a Soviet prison, along with several aunts and uncles, were re-located to the far reaches of the Soviet Union, raised families, then later emigrated to Germany.

Despite the hardships he endured, my father always had a sense of humor and a positive outlook. It was him that inspired me to make this journey.